Photo courtesy of JKönig on Flickr.
By Kim Bosch
I’ve never been to the Community Record Show, so – as a huge lover of the big black CD – when the semi-annual event rolled around last Sunday I jumped on board. The only problem? I was super-broke. Even after I cleaned out all the silver from my politically-punny coin jar (it reads “CHANGE! Yes we CAN!”), checked my couch cushions and scraped every pocket of every single one of my jackets, my sum total came to a meager $5.55 plus one British pound. I also found a bobby pin that I decided to keep in the mix, just to make things interesting.
With my coins jingling, I headed over to St. Anthony’s Hall off of Preston Street. The medium-sized room was filled with rows of folding tables and smelled like a bowling alley, although the crash of balls-meeting-pins was replaced by the sound of plastic and cardboard flapping together. It was an impressive crowd, where tee shirts and jeans were the uniform and red-eyed glassy staring was not considered odd behaviour. It was also a total sausage-fest (single Ottawa ladies look no further!). There was also, of course, music playing from the front of the room – everything from deep funk jams to Buddy Holly.
Now, I was entering this situation with very little cash and so, needless to say, I was feeling somewhat underfunded. In fact, I was complaining to a friend about it when a man nearby overheard and commented that I “wouldn’t find anything good for under $10”. To which I replied, with a confidence not exactly reflecting my real feelings, “I ACCEPT that challenge!” And was quickly off to prove him wrong.
To start I looked for Gypsy jazz or “Jazz Manouche”, specifically that rapscallion of a guitarist Django Reinhardt, but every table I asked was dry. So I turned my attention to Soul/R&B, my second favourite vinyl purchase. Crawling under a table amongst the legs of my fellow vinylites, I found my first big score: A copy of Stevie Wonder’s Inversions with a $5 price tag on the front!
I brushed myself off and with full composure inquired if the owner would take what I had. He said he would and tried to take BOTH of my twonies AND the 1 pound. Nice try. I knew that the British pound was worth at least$1.30, which plus the two toonies would have brought me over five dollars. I offered him the regal looking coin and one toonie and he accepted. Success! God bless you Vinyl Alibi (905-447-0891).
That left me with $2.55 and a bobby pin. Who would be the lucky recipient?
At one table I tried to bargain a Louis Armstrong and The Hot Five album (one with SOL Blues on it) down from $8, but that’s a long drop to $2.55 even with a bobby pin was in the mix. The guy at the table told me I had good taste, but he couldn’t sell it to me for so little:
Me: Well, I don’t have the money.
Guy: Well I can always hold it for you.
Me: No, no. I don’t have the money in my LIFE.
Guy: Well I was gonna say that there’s a bank machine around the corner…
Me: No, see, unless that bank machine disperses magic money …then yeah….
I walked away empty handed.
Finally, I found another record: The Kinks, One For the Road. A double album! Two Kinks for the price of one! I approached the man, Frank the Record Man to be exact, who was in charge:
Me: Will you take—
Frank: No.
Me: Ouch!
Frank: (stares me down)
Me: I’ve got…(pulling money out of pocket) $2.55 and a bobby pin.
Frank: (a slightly balding man) My hair isn’t long enough for that!
Me: Well, then, $2.55 is my final offer.
Frank: (puts out his hand and nods his head yes)
Frank also tells me that he’ll be at Lansdowne next weekend selling his wares for $1 each! (You’re welcome, Frank).
Now you may be asking yourself why vinyl? There are lots of reasons. It’s earthy and original. It holds a story not just in the music itself, but in the past music listeners as well. People like Pamela, the woman who signed her name in cursive on the front of my Stevie Wonder purchase. Who was Pamela? Did she love Stevie as much as I do? Did she die? Did she get boogie down to Higher Ground? After all, music is the great connector. It’s what keeps us together and reminds us that the past is alive and well-preserved in plastic.
Now if you excuse me, I’ve got a needle to drop.
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